The debate over whether medical practitioners should be allowed to advertise is on. So allow me to let you in on a little secret: doctors in Hong Kong have already been doing it.
The Medical Council has rules laid out in the Code of Practice, or 'red book'. It says: 'Self-advertisement, canvassing or publicity to enhance or promote a professional reputation for the purpose of attracting patients would constitute professional misconduct.'
If any of these rules are flaunted or infringed upon openly, the Medical Council will get on the doctor's case and disciplinary action will follow. But privately, all the rules are broken. Doctors can get away with it because they have accomplices.
Self-promotion is rampant among private doctors. Walk into many clinics, especially older ones, and you will find mirrors and plaques on the walls, singing the doctor's praises: 'Magic hands and a kind heart'; 'a medical genius'; and 'Wah Tor born again' (a reference to the legendary ancient healer known to bring back patients from the brink of death). They are gifts from friends and relatives, so it is not self-promotion. Some doctors prefer something more tailor-made. Hence a plaque inscribed with career highlights in script, reading like a eulogy. It may start with the claim that the doctor was brilliant even as a child, and that he scored straight As in school. The conclusion is usually about his saintly character: his total dedication to patients and to humanity in general. Someone else wrote the script, not him, so it's not against the rules.
I used to work for the health insurance industry. When my staff called a doctor's office to ask why the charge for a particular surgery was way over the top, it was not unusual for the nurses to tell us that it was because the surgeon was the best in town - or the only one in Hong Kong trained to perform the surgery using that special technique. Now, who could possibly have told the nurses that?
One doctor has his mother mill around his clinic, extolling his virtues and disparaging other doctors in the neighbourhood.